Now, as Egypt wavers between an Islamist and a democratic future, billionaire telecom scion and art patron Naguib Sawiris wants to be his country’s next leader – and he’s founded a political party – the Free Egyptian Party — as he prepares to do just that.

Muslims turned up in droves for the Coptic Christmas mass Thursday night, offering their bodies, and lives, as “shields” to Egypt’s threatened Christian community.

“We either live together, or we die together,” was the sloganeering genius of Mohamed El-Sawy, a Muslim arts tycoon whose cultural centre distributed flyers at churches in Cairo Thursday night, and who has been credited with first floating the “human shield” idea.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) condemns the vicious attack on innocent worshippers in the Saints Church in Alexandria, Egypt when a bomb was detonated at the conclusion of the celebration of a New Year’s midnight mass. As a result, at least 21 people have been killed and more than 80 injured.

Cairo’s highest civil court on Saturday ruled that 12 Christians who had converted to Islam could return to their original church, ending a bitter yearlong battle over identity and minority rights.

It was the second time in recent months that a court has upheld the rights of religious minorities, in a country that is 90 percent Muslim and where the distinction between civil law and religious principles is increasingly blurred.

Volunteers assembling a campaign to try to prevent the scheduled deportation of an Egyptian Christian couple say the need is urgent, because the couple sought religious asylum in the United States and that automatically makes them enemies of the state in Egypt.

The campaign is on behalf of Onsy Zachary and his wife Fadia, who have been living in the United States since 1998. Their supporters say they could be deported as early as the middle of September.

An obscure, Toronto-based Coptic Christian association has been thrust into the spotlight after three of its members were arrested in Cairo earlier this week, signalling another salvo in a long-running battle between Egyptian authorities and expatriate Christian groups.

Adel Fawzi, Peter Ezzat Mounir and Adeeb Ramses were arrested in Cairo on Wednesday, according to multiple sources. All three were working for the Cairo offices of the Middle East Christians Association, a Coptic Christian group founded by Nader Fawzy, an Egyptian-born Swedish citizen currently living in Toronto. Mr. Fawzy founded MECA four years ago after arriving in Canada, and says the group now has offices around the world and thousands of members.

At the invitation of Christian leaders in Egypt and Israel, Geoff Tunnicliffe, International Director for World Evangelical Alliance spent time interacting with Christian leaders in these countries to learn about the current realities for the church and finding how WEA could best serve its member alliances and the Christian Community.

Egypt's beleaguered Christian Coptic minority is to launch its own satellite television this month, but even some Copts fear the church's patronage of the channel will fan sectarian strife. In the aftermath of deadly riots in Alexandria on October 21 religious Copts see the creation of the channel as an essential tool to assert their repressed identity.

One hundred years ago, Alexandria was a cosmopolitan city that was home to Muslims, Christians and Jews.

Over the past week, Alexandria has been home to an ugly hatred that spurred Muslim rioters to rampage through Christian neighbourhoods, attacking churches and shops. This in turn caused a Christian candidate in next month?s parliamentary elections to withdraw and left many Christians scared to leave their homes.

Four people died and a nun was stabbed in the worst religious violence in Egypt in five years.